Transport 2_The Flood

by Phillip P. Peterson

  “I’m already aiming at him.”

  “Good, I’ll take care of the ones behind. But only shoot when I say.”

  Ernie watched as the first wotan stopped in front of the barbed wire, which blocked the pass about three hundred feet from where they stood. They had secured the terrain in between with landmines. The other wotans also stopped without changing their formation. The leader of the pack paced back and forth. It looked as if it were sniffing the metal—but since wotans didn’t have a head, and nobody knew for sure where their olfactory organ was, they couldn’t be sure. Jenny’s theory was that lots of sensory receptors were spread out over their brown, leathery skin. The monster took another step toward the wire, until it made contact with its skin. The metal dissolved with a hissing sound.

  “They want to get through the wire,” said Ernie quietly. “Okay, let’s get him!”

  Eliot fired. The wotan fell to the ground and stopped moving. At the same time, the others turned around and ran back toward the forest at lightning speed.

  “Let’s kill’em!” cried Ernie.

  “Why? They’re running away anyway.”

  “Do it!” Ernie fired, followed by Eliot. Within moments, several wotans lay dead in the grass. But they didn’t get them all. At least five of them made it to the forest and disappeared.

  “Fuck!” Ernie cursed.

  “What is it? What’s the problem?”

  Ernie laid his weapon on the floor and reached out again for the night vision device. “I reckon they were checking out the observation post. I wish they hadn’t made it back to the forest.”

  “Do you mean they’re going to get reinforcement?”

  Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know. But I bet you they have some kind of plan.”

  Linda came clambering up the ladder. “Everything okay?” She sounded drowsy.

  “We got a visit from a few wotans,” said Eliot. “But we chased them away.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Ernie sharply. “And then there’ll be more of them. Many more. How late is it?”

  “About another hour till sunrise,” said Linda.

  “We’ll wait till then. But then I want to talk to Marlene. Something’s going on here. I didn’t like the look of that foray one bit.”

  “But we’ve been attacked often enough!” said Eliot.

  “That wasn’t an attack. I don’t know what it was, but something is definitely brewing.”

  Chapter 33

  “Where is he?” asked Russell. He felt totally beat, and didn’t want to wait any longer. “Do I have to come too?”

  “I would prefer it if you did,” replied Marlene. She was about to say something else when there was a knock at the door and Ty finally entered the meeting room.

  “Sit down!” said Marlene. The sun had not gone up yet, and only a pale blue stripe on the horizon gave an indication that dawn was approaching.

  After they had given up hope of escaping with the transporter, they had spent the whole night talking. Russell looked in the mirror on the wall. There were dark rings around his eyes, caused partly by tiredness and partly by his illness. Ben didn’t look much better: he had spent the whole of the previous day at the observation post and had only got back to Eridu around midnight, when he had immediately joined the urgent meeting in Marlene’s office. Russell noticed with amazement that he acted as if nothing had happened between them. In fact, he was almost friendly toward him. The three of them had discussed every remaining option. There weren’t many, and none of them guaranteed the colony’s survival.

  Ty sat down next to John Dressel, who had reached the barrack a few minutes earlier. The physicist was unshaven and his hair stuck out in all directions. Russell leaned against the wooden wall. He was afraid of falling straight to sleep if he sat down on a chair. What he wouldn’t have done for a cup of coffee! But their supplies had been used up over ten years ago.

  Marlene sat down at the table opposite Ben and stared at Ty from beneath her drooping eyelids.

  “You made a suggestion to me two days ago.”

  Ty nodded.

  Marlene leaned forward. “Do you still think it’s possible?”

  Ty and Dressel glanced at each other. “Yes, I still think that we could build a new bomb,” confirmed Ty.

  Marlene nodded. “Good. Start straight away. You have four days, no more. You’ll get everything you need. Take as many men and women as you need.”

  Ty blinked. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  Russell stepped forward. “The plans for the evacuation have gone to dust. The transporter is dead.”

  Dr. Dressel opened his eyes wide. “The transporter’s dead? How . . .”

  “We don’t know,” said Marlene. “The control panel isn’t reacting, and neither is the sphere’s artificial intelligence. Something has paralyzed it.”

  “A defect?” asked the physicist.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Shall I take a look at the transporter?”

  “Would you be able to fix it?” Marlene snapped.

  The physicist was silent. Russell remembered his own dismay when he had realized that that the transporter was dead. Ever since, he had desperately been trying to think of an alternative plan, but he had come up with nothing. If the plan they had hatched last night failed, they were screwed.

  “You and Ty get to work on the bomb—that’s all I want you to do. The situation is critical. Activity has been reported down at the post. We don’t know how much time we have left until those monsters beat a path to our door. You won’t sleep or rest until the job is done. If necessary, get Doc Lindwall to prescribe you some stimulants. Our survival is at stake here. Your construction is our last hope. If you fail, we all die. Have you got that?”

  Ty and John exchanged brief glances and nodded in unison.

  “Good! We’ll check on a daily basis if the transporter is working again, but I presume that once the thing is dead, it’s dead.” Marlene turned to Ben and Russell. “You get a few hours’ sleep so that you can think clearly again. Ben, you have supreme command of the observation post. Think about what we could do to improve our defenses. We have to survive the first wave, at least.”

  Hawke nodded.

  “Russell, you’re going to rest for a while!”

  Rest? Of course, he was dead beat, but there was so much work to be done. The survival of the whole colony was at stake, and she wanted him to rest?

  “But . . .”

  “No buts! You look like shit. If you collapse, you won’t be of any use to us at all. You’ll oversee Ty and John’s work and give me regular updates. I’ll coordinate all the other work from here.”

  Russell nodded. Once again he was impressed by Marlene. She was a born leader, whether as a soldier or as the head of a civilian government. For as long as he had known her, she always put her own needs and opinions to one side. She never complained and she could work until she dropped. Plus she understood how people ticked and what they were capable of. She knew exactly what each and every person under her command could achieve. She drove people to their limits, but never beyond.

  Russell had known many people with leadership qualities, but most of them had made irrational decisions under pressure. Not Marlene. Even in this seemingly hopeless situation, she quickly but carefully weighed every possible option and selected the most viable one. In his whole life, he had only met one other person who was just as effective: General Morrow. Russell suddenly wondered what had become of his former superior. He would have certainly taken the blame for the loss of the transporter on Earth. Having already fallen out of favor over another incident, the disaster with the sphere would have guaranteed the end of his career. Morrow had been almost sixty. He had probably died years ago. Now Russell would never find out.

  “Perhaps you should also hit the sack,” he said to Marlene.

  She smiled at him weakly. “Later. First I have to talk to some people who can help with the new project. If you want to do me one more favo
r, please wake up Lee Shanker and Dr. Cashmore and send them over here. I’d like to talk to both of them as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 34

  “Four, three, two, one, detonate!” shouted Lee, and turned the lever on the remote control.

  The blast was so loud that Russell thought his eardrums had burst. The ground shook, and stones, rubble, and dirt flew out of the tunnel entrance. They were immediately enveloped in a cloud of brown dust and Russell had to sneeze.

  “That was stronger than planned,” said Sammy. “It would have worked with a little less explosive.”

  Lee just grunted. Once the cloud of dust had settled he stepped forward. The road below the tunnel entrance was covered with rubble. Lee called Max Dressel and some of the other second-generation helpers. They began to clear away the debris.

  Lee, Sammy, and Russell walked to the foot of the scaffold and climbed up the steps until they were standing in front of the tunnel entrance, which still had grey dust pouring out of it.

  Sammy coughed. “Let’s wait a few more minutes until the smoke has dispersed.”

  Lee nodded and rifled through some papers.

  “And what was the point of that explosion?” asked Russell.

  It was already late afternoon and the canyon walls cast dark shadows across the floor. Russell had slept the whole morning, and felt better after he woke up. Despite all of Ellen’s protests, he had taken two of Dr. Lindwall’s tablets and driven to the construction site with Sammy. He wanted to get an idea of the situation and see if he could help out in any way. But the men and women at the site were making good progress.

  “We have to create a big cave in the tunnel to set up the drilling equipment,” said Lee. He waved aside a cloud of smoke, turned on his flashlight, and stepped into the tunnel. Sammy and Russell followed him. The floor of the cave was covered in a fine layer of dust that immediately covered their boots. Russell coughed.

  After about sixty feet, the tunnel opened out into a big cave about the size of their mess room. The ground was covered in pieces of rock and debris. They would have to carry the stuff out by hand.

  “Looks okay,” Lee grinned.

  “Luckily. Our supply of C-4 is running out. We’ve only got four pounds left, and Ty and John need that to detonate the bomb,” said Sammy.

  “I say we drill the hole right in the middle. Here!” said Lee and pointed at the spot. Sammy marked it with a wooden stick.

  “And what’s the hole for?” asked Russell.

  Lee seemed to have a clear idea of how it all worked. “We’ll drill a hole here with a diameter of about six inches, and line it with a steel tube that Albert is finishing off in the workshop. Then we’ll lower down half of the plutonium. For the detonation, we’ll drop the other half of the plutonium from the top, and on top of that a metal mass and a charge of C-4, which will be detonated shortly before the moment of impact. The speed of the fall and the force of the exploding charge will combine the two plutonium halves into a super-critical mass,” he explained. He paused for a moment. “At least that’s how I understood it.”

  Ann Penwill entered the cave. “Travis has just arrived with a jeep, he’s got the drilling equipment on the back. Shall we bring it in?”

  Lee shook his head. “No, we have to get rid of the rubble first. Please get Manuel Sargent and the other boys. They should start on it right away.”

  The former lab assistant disappeared back down the tunnel.

  “How long will it take to drill the hole?” asked Russell. He still doubted if the plan was viable. Ty and his homemade atomic bomb? It would never work! But what other option did they have?

  “We’ll work through the night, and as long as no problems crop up we should be done by sunrise. In the morning, the workshop will deliver the steel pipe.”

  “Sounds like it’s all going according to plan.”

  Lee laughed gruffly. “This is just standard stuff. Ty and John definitely have the bigger challenge. I wouldn’t want to be playing around with plutonium.” He laughed again. “And Ty even seems to find the whole thing fun.”

  Sammy nodded. “Yeah, he was talking about what the two remaining nuclear warheads could be used for years ago. I was there when he suggested to Marlene that we detonate one of them north of the crop fields in order to create an artificial lake for bathing. You should have seen her face!”

  “A lake?” asked Russell in disbelief.

  “In his defense, he was drunk as a skunk at the time.”

  “I reckon Ty is a pyromaniac in disguise,” said Lee. “And what could be more appealing to a pyromaniac than a nuclear fire!”

  “If he’s successful, I don’t care if he’s out of his mind or not,” said Russell. “Because if he doesn’t succeed with his bomb, we’re dead meat.”

  “I still think we should have escaped into the mountains,” said Lee.

  “We don’t have enough supplies,” said Sammy.

  Lee shrugged and turned his attention back to his notebook.

  Manuel Sargent and three other youths entered the cave.

  “So shall we get rid of this stuff?” the wiry seventeen-year-old asked eagerly.

  Russell said goodbye and headed back to the colony with Ann Penwill.

  “Do you think we’ll manage?”

  Russell turned to face the petite woman who was steering the jeep dexterously through the twists and turns of the canyon. He wondered if she was interested in his honest opinion, or just wanted him to put her mind at rest. He decided on the former. “I wish I knew.”

  “Ty is sure he will,” she said quietly. She and Ty had two children. Edward was Grace’s age and Russell had often seen the two of them playing together.

  “And what do you think?” he asked.

  “I know Ty well. He throws himself into new projects full of optimism. The more complicated the better. But more than once he’s come home subdued, and admitted that he was in over his head. The fact that he’s now playing around with atomic bombs frightens me.”

  “Well, he’s the only person who has any idea about this stuff.”

  Ann guffawed. “He doesn’t actually have a clue. He may have read a few books on the subject, but that’s about it.”

  Russell looked at her, dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Read some books? I thought he he’d studied nuclear weapons technology.”

  “Ha! That’s what he wants you to believe! He’s never had anything to do with atomic bombs. And I’m scared he’ll get his fingers badly burnt in this experiment.”

  Russell swallowed. He knew that Ty wasn’t a nuclear weapons expert, but that everything he knew was self-taught was hard to get his head around. At least he had Dressel helping him. But he also only had a basic understanding of nuclear technology. He felt his pessimism turning into sheer despair.

  “I guess he knows what he’s doing,” said Russell, trying to sound as convincing as possible. Without much success.

  Ann didn’t say anything for a long while. “I doubt it,” she said quietly. “He always talks about what he wants to do and everything he’ll take care of, and then nothing happens. That’s one of the reasons we want to split up.”

  Russell was surprised. He had no idea about this—in a colony where rumors spread like wildfire.

  “Are things that bad between you?”

  Ann shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say it’s going badly. It’s just not going. Everything he says, everything he does—I just don’t care anymore, and I think he feels the same about me.”

  “Maybe you’ve just grown apart.”

  “Could be. It’s been like this for years. We’ve talked about it endlessly but nothing’s changed. There’s just nothing left to hold us together. The children are at an age where they’ll understand, so we’ll go our separate ways. If we survive this crisis that is.”

  They were nearing the settlement and Russell asked Ann to drop him off at the entrance to the physics lab. As he took his backpack from the back seat, s
he said: “But please still keep an eye on him.”

  Russell smiled and waved goodbye, and the jeep roared off toward the camp.

  Russell took a deep breath and opened the door to the lab container without knocking. Ty and Dr. Dressel were standing in front of the lab’s cupboard-shaped furnace, immersed in an animated discussion.

  “I don’t know enough to be able to judge,” the physicist was saying crossly. “I think Cashmore should take a look at it first.”

  “That’s really not necessary. I don’t see why . . .”

  “What’s going on? What are you two arguing about?” asked Russell.

  “Ty wants to melt down the plutonium of the first bomb to get it into the hemispherical shape that we need,” said Dr. Dressel. “I’ve been saying that we need our chemist to look over it first.”

  Russell nodded and unclasped the radio attached to his belt. “Marlene, can you hear me?”

  “What are you doing?” asked Ty. Russell cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “Marlene here, what’s up?”

  “Please send Dr. Cashmore to the physics lab.”

  “Will do.”

  Russell reattached the device to his belt and turned to Ty. “You’re not dealing with gelatin here. If one of you is unsure of how something needs to be done, then choose the safest option, is that clear? And if one of you wants to involve someone else, then that’s what will be done!”

  Ty folded his arms in front of his chest. “I’ve taken all necessary precautions. I filled the oven with helium to prevent a fire breaking out. I’ve already scratched off the nickel using the glove box, and nothing happened. I also used tungsten for the mold, as it has a much higher melting point than plutonium.”

  “I believe that you’ve been careful—but surely it wouldn’t harm to let someone with a better knowledge of chemistry to take a look,” said John.

  “It’ll take ages, if . . .”

  There was a knock at the door and Dr. Cashmore entered the container. “What’s going on?”